Eight book titles have had one letter removed to create wacky titles:
- 23A: [James A. Michener novel about a chili morsel in a piece of nursery furniture?] is CRIB BEAN, which you get by removing an A from “Caribbean.”
- 30A: [Charles Dickens novel about a residence with constant plumbing problems?] is LEAK HOUSE. Remove a B from “Bleak House.”
- 37A: [John Steinbeck novel about furious, slack-jawed gazes?] is THE GAPES OF WRATH. Remove an R from “The Grapes of Wrath.”
- 49A: [Carol Shields novel about a person who celebrates a birthday in early April by getting high?] is THE STONED ARIES. Remove an I from “The Stone Diaries.” So close to making a 4/20 joke with this title, but in the zodiac calendar, the last day of the Aries sign is April 19.
- 68A: [Donna Tartt novel about a short putt?] is THE GOLF INCH. Remove a D from “The Goldfinch.”
- 83A: [Chinua Achebe novel about how slim Oreo cookies just can’t stay intact?] is THINS FALL APART. Remove a G from “Things Fall Apart.”
- 100A: [Celeste Ng novel about the absence of male deer in people’s lives?] is OUR MISSING HARTS. Remove an E from “Our Missing Hearts.” A test-solver pointed out to me that it’s conceivable you could initially fill in OUR MISSING STAGS since “Our Missing Stages” is a plausible book title as well.
- 109A: [Blake Crouch novel about the stuff that makes up Noah’s ship?] is ARK MATTER. Remove a D from “Dark Matter.”
Take those deleted letters and you spell out the revealer at 119A: [Shortened, and what the letters removed from eight novels in this puzzle spell out] which is ABRIDGED. This is a spiritual successor to my Oct. 20, 2019 puzzle “The Purloined Letters,” which had the same theme concept but different book titles and a different revealer.
Instead of mentioning other answers and clues, I wanted to take a moment to salute a colleague. Mitch Rubin has been my editor ever since I began writing puzzles for The Washington Post in December, 2015. He was one of the people who interviewed me when I applied for the gig, he reviewed and edited almost every one of my blog posts, and he was instrumental in convincing the newspaper to keep me when The Washington Post Magazine shut down at the end of last year. Today’s blog post marks the last one of mine that he will have reviewed, as he is leaving The Post on June 30. I like to think that “To Make a Long Story Shorter” is an apt, concise description of editing, and although that’s not all that an editor does, perhaps this puzzle can serve as a fitting tribute to Mitch.
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What I admired most about Mitch was his willingness to learn about how crosswords work and do whatever he could to promote them for readers since, by his own admission, he doesn’t really solve puzzles. At the same time, I needed him to help me stay on task and meet my deadlines, to advocate for my crosswords to The Post’s management, and communicate with copy editors and The Post’s design team and the tech team at Amuse Labs whenever I wrote an unusual puzzle that needed some extra time and care. Not only that, but not once in the entire time I’ve written crosswords for The Post did he ever ask me to change out an answer or ask me to be anything other than myself in my work. You don’t always get a supervisor at your job who can successfully balance the needs of multiple people and Mitch was great at that.
Thanks for all your help over the last seven-and-a-half years, Mitch, and good luck on your next adventures.
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